Solar gain causes significant thermal management challenges for wearable electronic devices such as, for example, head-mounted display (HMD) devices that are exposed to solar radiation during operation. For example, wearable electronic devices typically have a housing that encloses heat-emitting electronic components. In these cases, the housing serves the thermal management function of dissipating into the surrounding environment some, or even all, of the heat that is internally emitted by the enclosed electronic components. When operating in direct sunlight, solar gain may significantly impair the rate at which the housing dissipates the heat emitted by the enclosed electronic components. This is because in addition to dissipating heat emitted internally by the enclosed electronics, the housing must also continually dissipate heat that results from solar radiation absorption.
The effects of solar gain may be reduced in some cases by designing wearable electronic devices to have a highly reflective outer surface. For example, an outer surface comprised of a polished metal or a white paint may indiscriminately reflect solar radiation (e.g., visible and invisible radiation) rather than absorbing it in the form of heat. Unfortunately, such highly reflective outer layers typically have very low emissivity which results in inefficiencies with respect to radiatively dissipating internally emitted heat. Furthermore, in some cases it is desirable for the outer surface color to be highly customizable even past the limited number of light-colored and highly reflective choices. For example, based on a particular intended field-use, it may be desirable for a wearable electronic device to have an outer surface that is dark-colored and substantially non-reflective in the visible-light spectrum.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.